Thursday, July 30, 2015

So, in addition to ignoring poor attendance, bullying, drug use and management infighting at charter schools, National is also ignoring apparent fraud by staff:

Staff who withdrew $4000 in cash from a school's account and failed to explain what they spent it on will not be investigated, the Ministry of Education says.

A financial audit of Te Pumanawa o te Wairua, a struggling Northland charter school, found staff made the cash withdrawals from ATM machines and a BP station from January last year.

Education minister Hekia Parata last week decided to leave the school open until at least the end of the year, despite the Ministry of Education's reservations and its multiple contract breaches, as she believed it would be best for the 39 children currently attending.

Which is $4,000 being spent on greedy, fraudulent staff rather than on the kids they're supposed to be educating. If this had happened in the state education system, those responsible would have been sacked and prosecuted; here, National seems willing to turn a blind eye to theft of public money because they are incentivised not to admit failure.